


Adopted chaos

by down



Series: Ours [1]
Category: Magic Knight Rayearth
Genre: Multi, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, everyone needs baby dragons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-24 22:26:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13820733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/down/pseuds/down
Summary: “This is not what I meant to spend my afternoon doing!"Or: Umi hatched half a brood of dragons. Oops.





	Adopted chaos

**Author's Note:**

> Originally for Umi Week 2015 on tumblr

Umi dropped her head into her hands – and then lifted it straight back up to growl at the bundle of bone and scales which had tried to take advantage of her inattention to get past her. 

Being all of seven days old, it had tried to climb over her rather than around her, which rather gave it away. The little baby claws were plenty sharp enough to prick through her jeans even if the effort of getting legs and wings and tail all in order apparently meant making little fluting chirrrrip chirrrrrrrip noises the whole time it moved. 

Umi grabbed the wriggling dragonling and dropped it back on her other side, wincing as the uncoordinated but determined flailing left faint scratches up her arms. “Oh no you don’t, you get back over here to your food, loser, don’t you think about taking theirs. Again.” 

It stared up at her, and made an indignant whistle – before giving in and going back to the mushed up fish it was meant to be eating. 

On her other side, the second of three hatchlings was gulping down the meat she’d had to shred into tiny pieces so it wouldn’t choke, stopping belatedly to hiss over her legs at the already-thwarted attempt to steal its food. While the first dragonling was all long bony angles and silver-blue glints, the second was mottled all over in shades of crimson and mud, shorter, but broader. 

The third, sat at Umi’s feet and happily chirring away as it gnawed on a large piece of fruit, ignored the other shenanigans and kept going. It was a curl of green, darkest at the muzzle and fading back to nearly white at the edge of wings and tail. Neither of the others had the slightest bit of interest in that one’s food. But the other two kept trying desperately to figure out what that strange-smelling food was and if it was tasty – and Umi had already spent an hour last night with them curled up about her making unhappy noises about their stomach aches and not letting her move. 

“Hey!” She folded up about the little red one as it tried to jump across her legs, dumping it back on top of its dish. “This is not what I meant to spend my afternoon doing! Just eat your own food, daft creatures, or you’ll end up with stomach aches again. Though that might actually teach you to not eat the wrong thing-” 

“Not likely.” She craned her head back to look up at Clef, who was leaning on the solid stone barrier he’d pulled out of the ground to give the hatchlings a den they couldn’t escape from – the one she was leaning back against.“I mean, maybe once they reach a few months old, but before that anything which smells even faintly like food will get eaten.”

“Why can’t they all just eat the same thing!?” She glared up at him when Clef started laughing – and more when Ascot, a few metres further round, joined in. “I mean it! They’re all from the same clutch – I found them all together anyway, so surely that means they should all be the same! But you keep telling me this one’s a waterway dragon of some kind, this one’s from the forest, and this one – neither of you even know what kind of thing it is!” She pointed at the little red thing, who looked up and flapped the half-grown wings twice before eyeing the route over Umi again. She growled at it, and it flapped once more, then turned to the meat in front of it. 

“Dragons.” Clef said, folding his arms on the top of the wall, and apparently just there to watch her flailing.

…As she could still see the scratches criss-crossing over his arms from where he’d been looking after her foundlings all week, she probably shouldn’t complain. But she kept on glaring – and at Ascot, who was hauling over a bucket of water and some clean rags to help clean them up after they were done – which might be a while. He was the one who had suggested they make a small ‘den’ for the hatchlings in the curve of this barely-used garden, and he’d been here as much as Clef had, she knew. 

“They’ll have all had the same mother,” Ascot said, “but female dragons can chose to mate a number of times before they actually lay a brood, with a number of mates. Which means one brood can have numerous kinds of hatchling. They aren’t just only water or only forest either, no dragon is – pure, I guess you could call it. They’re all a mix of traits from both their parents. I think the mother of these was more of an earth dragon, they all have the wider shoulders for spending more time walking than most other varieties…”

“Also, they’re all stubborn as anything.” Clef said, with another laugh, and Umi would have thrown something at him except the only ammunition she had was rapidly being consumed. 

“I don’t know why you think this is so funny-” 

“What, the fact you managed to startle half a brood of eggs into hatching prematurely by liberally watering them? Or the bit where you’re actually helping with the chaos you’ve caused, this time? Unlike knocking over that row of bookcases in the library last month then leaving me to sort out all the books which had come off-” 

“I said I was sorry!” The probably-water-mostly dragonling chose that moment to try and scramble over her again, having run out of food, and Umi’s hiss as the claws dug through her jeans blended into the hiss of the sibling whose last bites of food were being threatened. “Stop that – I had an exam I was trying to revise for, you told me I could go!” 

Ascot lifted another bucket of water into the pen, this one to refill the wide low waterbowl which curved out of the stone wall. “Was that the week after you started the waterfight, then left when the children worked out how to make waterbombs?” He asked, grinning quickly over at Clef, and Umi pouted at both of them, arms still wrapped about the mostly-water-probably dragonling. 

Clef snickered a little, but climbed over the wall. “Well, may as well help, or I guess these little ones will still be dirty at dinnertime. Here, you. Let go of her and let me get you clean, nuisance… Ascot, could you hand me one of those-” 

Ascot tossed an already dampened bit of cloth over to Clef as he removed the dragon from her lap. “Well, we’ve had so much practise, all week.” The little green one was playing with the rind of its fruit now, and Ascot knelt down beside it, removing the messy 'toy’ to a shrill whistle of disapproval. “If you can clean that one up, Umi…” 

“…Thank you.” Umi said, quietly enough both men could pretend they hadn’t heard it. 

With all three of them working together, it wasn’t long before the dragonlings were a clean, snoring pile in the sheltered corner of their pen, tangled about each other to sleep off their meal. Ascot helped Umi clamber over the wall, and Clef scrambled over beside them, but all three stopped to lean on it and watch the little sleeping family a while longer.


End file.
